1. MASACCIO 1401-1428
His nickname meaning 'Big Tom' or
'Clumsy Tom' (his real name, Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone Cassai, is
remembered by no one), Masaccio died in 1428 aged only 26 while working on the
Brancacci Chapel frescoes of the life of St Peter, including The Baptism Of The Neophytes.
They
were so astonishing in their realism, characterisation and communication of
form, activity and emotion, that the chapel served as something of a school for
later generations of Florentine painters, and to Vasari, the painter-historian,
Masaccio was the founder of painting in Florence. Traces of his influence are
evident in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael at the end
of the 15th century. Even now, six centuries on, the realism of his nude Adam
and Eve, and of the shivering boy waiting for baptism, his command of form,
movement and character in grave and monumental figures fully-clothed, and his
observation of architecture and landscape, all astonish us. Read more
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